Maxwell: Hostage of Love

With his first new album in seven years out soon, the R&B survivor opens up about moving past family trauma and shame, and how it feels to be a 43-year-old bachelor singing songs of everlasting romance.

On his very first album, Maxwell was not afraid to pop the question. “Will you marry me?” he purred near the end of Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, his star-making 1996 debut. Back then, he was in his early 20s, making music that grooved with frictionless precision while calling back to an earlier era of tasteful sensuality. On its surface, Urban Hang Suite sounded like idealized romance, a dream first date—but even that proposal track came with a disclaimer. “I never thought myself the… kinda man that would ever wanna settle down,” he sang, spiking his own fantasy with a dose of reality. “Statistics say it’s crazy, passion won’t survive.”

Twenty years later, Maxwell is still making love songs, but they’ve grown more complicated, more restless. He knows people come to him for music to get them in the mood, to forget about the petty squabbles and try to realize a companionship that can be everlasting. With this he’s built a remarkably stable brand amid industry turmoil; each of his four albums has gone platinum. But he’s also aware of the irony that he’s never managed to find that eternal kind of love himself. At 43, he’s never been married, and there are moments on his new album, blackSUMMERS’night—the middle chapter of a planned trilogy—when he wrestles with the contradictions that make up his life and art. “I’m confusing at times, sometimes I might lie,” he sings on “Listen Hear,” the record’s confessional closer. “I’m scared and I’m shy/To show you just how weak I am/Because sometimes I am not the kind of man I would like to be.” Co-produced by Maxwell and longtime collaborator Stuart Matthewman of Sade, the song is pure quiet storm, its ominous clouds punctured by twiggy bolts of lightning in the form of an isolated guitar line. The effect is smooth. But it’s uneasy, too.

Sitting on the roof of Manhattan’s Soho House in the middle of May, the sky is clear, with all of downtown underneath it. The scene is idyllic, almost to the point of parody, with the upper-crust creatives that make up the members-only club’s clientele lounging next to a heated pool on a Thursday afternoon as the bustle of 14th Street teems below. The Soho House is the type of place with its own set of rules—cameras, cell-phone conversations, and “overtly corporate attire” are prohibited—all of which encourage a sense of laid-back elegance. There are model types with small dogs getting some sun. There are British DJs making a pit stop before their next yacht gig. There is Maxwell, a guy who has performed for President Obama often enough to lose count. (“Four or five times,” he guesses.)

Wearing a green camo zip-up, shorts, and Ray Bans, he doesn’t look out-of-place. He smiles easily. He’s animated, loose. He likes it here. It’s close to his home, and he knows the owner. He was here on April 21, when Prince died. “It was a beautiful day, and then my mood was just fucked,” he recalls between bites of a veggie burger, his voice as gritty as his falsetto is sleek. “My friends here were trying to cut deals about stuff, and I was like, ‘Guys, you know Prince just died, right? I think it’s time to start playing some Prince music, maybe? Because he just died.’” Prince was played well into the night.

The rooftop is only about 12 miles and a bridge or tunnel away from the notoriously tough Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, where Maxwell grew up in the notoriously tough ’70s and ’80s, but it feels like a universe away. The child of a teenage Haitian mother and a markedly older Puerto Rican father, who wasn’t in the picture, the singer has always been self-conscious about the less-than-ideal circumstances surrounding his birth. “It wasn’t a planned pregnancy,” he once said, and his parents’ strict religious families didn’t approve of the cross-cultural nature of their relationship, either. “There was shame in having me.”

The odd-man-out mentality that defined his youth attracted him to similarly unique characters, and it’s also imbued him with a fierce loyalty along with a wariness of outsiders. His closest musical collaborator, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Hod David, spent part of his early life as one of Texas’ few Israeli Jews. The two originally bonded in the years leading up to Urban Hang Suite, when they were busboys in New York, and they’ve stuck together since; David co-wrote and co-produced the lion’s share of blackSUMMERS’night alongside his lifelong friend. Manager John Dee Hammond, the grandson of legendary record man John Henry Hammond—who guided the careers of artists including Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, and Aretha Franklin—has also been with Maxwell from the beginning of his career. And during our interview, Hammond protectively sits inches away from us. A friendly dad in a Mets cap who looks decidedly dressed down amid the club’s fashionistas, Hammond seems like he’s trying not to monitor our chat too closely, but Maxwell still defers to him here and there.

Reflecting on the friends and creative partners he’s had since his start in the music industry, Maxwell tells me, “My darker, humbler beginnings were like a magnet that brought me so much—I was lucky to find a family in my business that I didn’t have in my home.” It’s an optimistic twist on the typical tortured artist’s tale. Family is family; love is love. To really feel it is to know what it means to be without.

Parts of Maxwell's new video for “Lake by the Ocean” were filmed in Haiti, where his mother grew up.

Pitchfork: Fifteen years ago, you said that, because of your upbringing, you never thought you could deserve a family of your own. Do you still feel that way?

Maxwell: I’m a little bit more confident now. I’m older and I have a lot of things that I really want to clarify about why everything was so secretive and bizarre with my life, just things I was ashamed of that I shouldn’t have been ashamed of. Because the circumstances of my life—my mother’s origin, my father’s origin, how she was 16 when she had me and he was much older, being shipped off here—I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. I felt transformed through this music thing. It was like I finally felt good about myself. That’s why I didn’t really connect myself with the energy people gave me onstage back then. It was like, This is happening... but, really? Because most people grow up with parents and family that really love them and nurture them to the point where they believe the world revolves around them. I didn’t really have that.

But I have great forgiveness and love for my mother, because she had that life. I recently went to Haiti and saw stuff that made me go, “Oh OK, this is what it was like for her.” It changed my whole outlook—and then I ended up finishing the record. It was so cosmic. It was like this weight off my shoulder. I didn’t attach myself to being the kid that was a child of shame anymore. And I have a good relationship with my mom now.

When you decided to be a performer, do you think you were subconsciously looking for the motherly acceptance you didn’t get at home?

All the women did it. It was almost like the universe conspired and said, “We’re going to have all these moms and their grandmoms love you.” It never ultimately compensated for the one that you wanted to love you, but it doesn’t matter because that was just not what was supposed to happen. James Brown didn’t have that; I'm not James Brown by any stretch of the imagination. But I just accept the experience for what it was. The hellish feeling of being a creative person is constantly trying to chase a life that never was supposed to be that way. It happened this way for a reason: to write those songs, to create that sense of humility. Most of my contemporaries were very narcissistic, but I never really woke up thinking I was so beautiful and great-looking and all that. I look back [at old videos and photos] now and I'm like, Fuck! Damn, word? But in the moment, I just thought of myself as that guy who had a family situation.

Do you feel like having gone through that dysfunction put you at a disadvantage in terms of marriage and having kids yourself?

Dysfunction is amazing food for music and art. There are the lucky ones who don’t need it, but there’s nothing as pretty as the caged bird that sings, or the prince that's banging his head against the cage that he’s in. That sound rings across the world. People stop and go, “That’s the most beautiful sound ever.” And it’s someone hurting! Go figure.

And though I write about marriage and proposal a lot, but I never saw it work. I mean, I know people who got married, but there’s a lot of shit that goes on. I have a different view of marriage. It’s more of a friendship. It’s a relationship between you and the children you might have. That’s really the bond, because you're going to get taken over by the child. They are going to win. There is no other way around that. I don’t know one married couple that looks at each other and goes, “I love you more than my kid.” There’s no way. Do you have children?

Not yet.

John Dee Hammond [manager]: I have two.

M: His youngest is my godson. When they see me, they go nuts.

JDH: They do. Uncle Max.

M: But next time I have to wear a white suit, don’t bring them.

JDH: They didn’t get nothing on it.

M: They wrinkled my stuff up [on “Colbert”]!

JDH: You looked great.

M: Meeting Stephen Colbert was the best thing that happened in my life. I fucking love him. He was so funny to me when he was on Comedy Central, I would run home to watch.

“I learned how to let go and make a little mistake, which was exciting. Even when we did ‘Colbert,’ there was a moment where a note was off, and I was actually into it. I was like, This is what we call being human.”

At this point you’re kind of known for taking your time between albums, but how do you account for the seven years between the last one and this one?

It was a very long, arduous process of me turning 40 and having all this anxiety. My friends are over here having children and now they have different responsibilities towards me. I felt an incredible shift with [longtime collaborator] Hod [David]—not in terms of his work, but he became a father, and there’s just no replacing the feeling that your own child gives you. So those dynamics changed. A lot.

There was a part of me that was trying to suss out how to marry the newer sound and keep the story of the first album going, too. It’s got to be on purpose, but by accident. And I also learned how to let go and make a little mistake and sound a little gruffer, which was exciting. Even when we did “Colbert,” there was a moment where a note was off, and I was actually into it. I go to all these concerts and I know all the Pro Tools work that’s happening, but when that note was off, I was like, This is what we call being human. That said, you also want to be boutique. You want it to be a delicacy.

But your human experience is what allows people to be empathetic to you musically. That’s why everyone’s first album is the shit, because they’ve had all this time to be human. And then, slowly but surely, you become so far removed from the actual human experience, and the records reflect that. I don’t want to be in a place of such comfortability that I don’t have an understanding of how to communicate certain things; I feel like if you’re too settled financially, your music starts to suck. Then artists need help from people who are 17 who are actually living normal lives to bring that energy. I don’t want to be like Michael Jackson and wake up and realize I had no childhood, did nothing, went nowhere—that I wrote and performed, but I didn’t do anything. It’s not natural not to be human.

Do you feel like being able to look back on cautionary tales like Michael makes it easier for an artist of your generation to manage your life and not self-combust?

Well, I mean, it’s always iffy. Great music is not born out of a person who’s had a very nuclear family growing up. Richard Pryor’s story is amazing. James Brown’s story is insane. That’s kind of what you’re signing up for. If your shit is crazy, everyone else gets to have a normal life. You get to bleed for them, and that blood is their wine. It’s unfortunate that that's how it is. Maybe I set myself up for heartbreak, for whatever reason. I’m trying to transition from that. I’ve had enough years of beating myself up and I got a lot of songs to show for it. My whole thing is not about trying to come off as macho and powerful as possible—it’s about vulnerability. And then you can be a voice for someone who isn’t able to express that. But it’s a very weird place to be sometimes. That’s why I like Prince so much. He had his ego for sure, but he could be so delicate and so vulnerable.

My favorite song on the new album is “Hostage,” which puts forth this quietly radical idea about commitment. You sing: “I’m free inside the cage of your heart in gold.” This idea of embracing being a hostage when it comes to love struck me.

That’s where my head is now. I’ve had enough of my crazy days, so I can easily see myself being free in a cage. But I’m a very complicated person. Sometimes I’m like, Why should I get married? Just because it’s supposed to happen at a certain age? And then I get divorced? It’s a different era now, when people want their time more. And it also depends on what kind of family situation you've been brought up in. For me, it’s difficult to find someone who's actually all right with being in the background a little bit, being cool about it—being hot, but cool about it.

That's also what you're saying when you name-check Michelle Obama on the song “III,” right?

Yes: “I just want a Michelle Obama lady/To hold me down when the world’s crazy.” I had to do that, since she’s leaving the office. She's probably had the hardest position, all the opposition and the resistance she's experienced, and having to console Barack during the nights of trying to help get gay rights, stopping the whole gun thing—and then you have Trump over there.

It’s an interesting time.

It’s a sad time. Trump married the seriousness of politics with social media and reality show bullshit. And people are OK with it, because that’s the culture now—until it gets really real when you’re fighting a war again. You would have thought we would have learned our lesson by now.

As a big fan of Marvin Gaye, have you ever considered doing a What’s Going On-type album with more political overtones? Does that appeal to you at all?

It does. I might surprise you on the [next album] with that. I loved Marvin’s approach. It felt like Martin Luther King to me. It was a mirror. It wasn’t militant. It wasn’t like a lecture. It was just: Here’s what’s going on, guys. And I appreciate that. Funny enough, the [upcoming] movie Birth of a Nation[about Nat Turner, who led a slave revolt in 1831] jump started my creative engine a little bit [this time]. I wrote a song for the movie, and it really made me love making music again. I wrote that song from a perspective of trying to show the patriotic connections between us all as Americans. I am not here to create songs about resistance. I want to write songs about unifying people. But at the same time, Hod—my closest collaborator—can agree with the Kendrick Lamar approach as well. You need the best of both worlds. But I’m a love song guy. I can’t come out here talking about “kill the white people” or whatever. I just think that we’re all Americans and we need to concentrate on that fact, because that’s a very powerful thing.

You’ve kept a tight creative circle over the years, but moving forward would you ever consider working with a bigger variety of producers and collaborators?

Look, I’m not just getting every producer that’s written a hit for somebody else. I don’t like to work like that. It feels like a machine. I’ve just worked with my friends; it feels safe. Early on, I worked as a dishwasher. I worked at Pizza Hut. I remember being really sad one day when doing those jobs because I had so much passion for music, so I said to myself in the bathroom: "If I get to make music, I promise I won’t ever do it to make money.” And the universe has sworn me to that, because in the beginning I had a few sketchy demos that were clearly me trying to make a hit record—and they never worked.

Yeah. But I think it’s a better record because it took the time it took. “Hostage,” for example, was around for four years, but I just didn’t have the thing in me so that could sing it like that; it was not fully there. We chiseled it away. I know I’ve said it before, but the next one will not be a seven-year wait. I can not put a record out when I’m 50 with the same title. I need to move on. I have other things that I want to do: musically, creatively, artistically, film-wise, things that deal with technology, like being able to experience a concert at home. But I don’t want to give all my ideas away.